Food Storage Challenge

[Zenbirder]

How about split peas as a cheap food storage? I got enough to fill a one gallon glass jar, 7 lbs. at 68 cents a lb.(total $4.76) at Wally World (nasty place but necessary here). That is a lot of food for not much money!

Justusnak, can you list a few of your freebee sites for us, or how you search to find them?

 

[FarmerChick]

I absolutely loved freebies and still do, but honestly, my feelings toward that is changing...I feel more guilty getting freebies in small packages, wasting postage, packing material, etc. etc. etc. It is not green to acquire these....ya know what I mean....but I have had tons of freebies but lately I can't bring myself to order any cause of the waste of small packages and the extra trash etc. it makes.

I don't know.....the guilt is getting to me.

 

[Cassandra]

I love freebies, too. But I get things only that I know I'm going to use. At one time, I would get anything just cause it was free!

I got a couple more items for my food storage this week.

Jar of peanut butter for $2.75 and a bag of great northern beans (love those!) for $1.75. I am going to try to stick to a few dollars a week for a while. I like the idea of $5 a week.

Cassandra

 

[Cassandra]

Yes, I am still doing this! John & I switched from once a week shopping to every two weeks (to save money) so I didn't get any last week. I tried to make up for it this week.

While I was out at lunch I found what I thought was a good deal on pinto beans (my family's new favorite food.) This is what I got for emergency storage.


10 lb rice $4.75
Can pink salmon 2.25
4 lbs pinto beans 2.50
250 matches .50

Total so far today: $10.70 (including tax)

We will be doing the actual grocery shopping later this weekend. So I intend to get more. I want to pick up some prairie belt sausage to go with the rice and beans. I almost bought noodles, but figured in an actual emergency, it would be more efficient to make noodles. Anyway, this is supposed to be emergency food. Food we can eat in the event of something catastrophic... where we'd be forraging, hunting, and trapping out of necessity.

I'm getting a pretty good little stock pile, counting all the foods from the harvest I have put by.

Cassandra

 

[keljonma]

I bought another double pack of 40 oz jars of Jif peanut butter. Usually it is $9.40, but was on sale for $6 and I had a $1 off coupon. (Jif is the only brand dh will eat, and since he takes pb & homemade jam sandwiches every day, that is what we buy.)

 

[FarmerChick]

wow with that coupon you got very close to 50% off.....good deal! that is my kind of shopping~!

 

[dacjohns]

I think it is worth repeating (and I don't remember which thread it has been said in).

Don't save your emergency food for emergencies.

Eat what you store and store what you eat. You need to rotate your food or you chance losing some of it to spoilage and damage. Also your body needs to be used to what you eat. If your emergency food is different from what you usually eat you may be in for some intestinal distress.

 

[Cassandra]

Of course!

Though I store most of this dehydrated food in the freezer (where it should keep for an extraordinarily long time.) We do eat this stuff, I'm just not in the habit of buying five or ten pounds of it at a time.

I do have a system, though. I'm buying things with an astronomical shelf life. I'm trying to arrange it so that I'm rotating on about a year basis. kwim?

Cassandra

ETA: website with food storage shelf life: http://www.solareagle.com/PREP/SHLFLIFE.HTM

 

[VT-Chicklit]

Cassandra, you must have read my mind. I now look at the "use by" dates on the food that I am planning to store for an emergency. I am not buying any that have less than a 1 year storage for that purpose and I am trying to get items that are good til at least the spring of 2010. I have rearranged my food shelves so that the items with the earliest dates are to the front and later dates are to the back. I use the front items first and the replacements are placed to the back.

 

[Mackay]

This week:

20 packages of dried onion soup mix: 30 cents each
20 packages of Alfredo sauce mix: 30 cents each
20 packages of Taco mix: 30 cents each
10 packages of linguini 2 lb. 1.50 each

all from Western Family.